


Cigarette Burns

by Hoodoo



Category: Rick and Morty
Genre: Self-Destruction, Self-Harm, Self-Hatred
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-14
Updated: 2018-01-14
Packaged: 2019-03-02 04:04:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 448
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13310028
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hoodoo/pseuds/Hoodoo
Summary: It's well known Rick has a self-destructive streak. Maybe he hides some of it under the guise of self-improvement . . .





	Cigarette Burns

**Author's Note:**

> For anon prompt: anything where rick has a bad habit of putting his cigarettes out on his arm/skin

Cigarette burns. 

In the film industry, way back when, cigarette burns were a visual cue to the projectionist that a new reel needs spliced to the one before it. It indicates that a change is needed.

Rick Sanchez makes his own cigarette burns, more literally. He uses alcohol to dampen the reality of his life, to make it easier to forget, as an excuse when he screws up. But when major events occur, the ones he feels in his bones modify his trajectory . . . those come down like a lightning strike. As calm, confident, and cocky as he seems, those lightning bolts rattle him. Make him question things. _Terrify_ him.

Those events—leaving the Flesh Curtains. Beth being born. Leaving. Coming back. Morty, his grandson, being good and moral and almost being killed, again, again, again because of his actions—those events he doesn’t want to keep down. He needs those memories to keep him balanced. To remind him _he needs to change._

Each of those events gets marked by a cigarette burn. 

Rick doesn’t smoke much, but he keeps a battered pack in his car, in his room, in his lab coat. If something transpires that he needs to mark it, needs to etch it, he uses his own skin to memorialize it. He lights a smoke, sometimes watches it turn to ash, sometimes takes a drag, and then, when it’s almost to the butt, he lets smoke slip passed his lips, wondering why it always comes to this, wondering if he’ll ever not have to do it again.

Then he presses the still lit cigarette into the tender skin on the inside of his upper arm. 

It sizzles, it hurts like white, unadulterated agony, and leaves a jagged edged circle that he’s learned from experience will scar in ugly.

Morty caught him once. He witnessed his Grandfather deliberately press a lit cigarette into his own skin. The boy shrieked in horror, then sobbed when Rick tried to explain it. He continued to weep as he insisted on cleaning and bandaging the wound. Rick just let him work, and tried not to flinch at the new pain Morty caused with clumsy nursing.

When it was done, Morty scolded him. Threatened him. Told him in no uncertain terms to never do it again. Abashed and at that point, drinking heavily, Rick agreed.

It lasted as long as the next time his grandson was almost maimed again.

Rick Sanchez sees himself as the hero of his own movie, full of adventure and excitement and laughter and agony. And film reels have markers to show when a change needs made. So he gets a cigarette burn too. 

That’s only right.

_fin._


End file.
